Judge dismisses lawsuit over phone records
Citing national security, a federal judge Tuesday threw out a lawsuit aimed at blocking AT&T Inc. from giving telephone records to the government for use in the war on terror.
"The court is persuaded that requiring AT&T to confirm or deny whether it has disclosed large quantities of telephone records to the federal government could give adversaries of this country valuable insight into the government’s intelligence activities," U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly said.
Kennelly ruled in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois on behalf of author Studs Terkel and other activists who said their constitutional rights were violated because of a National Security Agency program of gathering phone company records illegally.
This won’t do. I hope the A.C.L.U. is planning their appeal as we speak. adversaries of this country already know AT&T is doing this. They can read it right here in this blog.
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To: adversaries of this country: On the offhand chance that you don’t already know this, AT&T has disclosed large quantities of telephone records to the federal government. |
http://waynemadsenreport.com/TiceSubpoena.pdf
Ed. note: The venue of the grand jury that has subpoenaed Tice, the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, is noteworthy. It indicates that Tice may merely be a witness and not a target in the investigation. NSA and DIA, where Tice worked, are in Maryland and the District of Columbia, respectively. Any case involving those agencies would be normally handled by the District Courts for Southern Maryland and the District of Columbia, respectively. However, when Porter Goss was CIA director, he stated he wanted to prosecute journalists who published what he considered classified information. The CIA is headquartered in Virginia and the US District Court for Eastern Virginia is considered a “rocket docket” for CIA legal matters.